


A True Blue Miracle

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christmas Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 15:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3073253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Walt's Christmas Eve doesn't go as expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A True Blue Miracle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VillaKulla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VillaKulla/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Breaking Bad, and I make no money from this.
> 
> A/N: The title is that of a song from "Christmas Eve on Sesame Street".

Walt’s morning had not gone well. It was Christmas Eve, of all times of the year, and Skyler and he and been at each other’s throats worse than ever. Walt Jr. had gone off to spend the day at Louis’ house, and Walt had been furious when he’d found out.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” he’d yelled at Skyler, “This is Christmas! He’s supposed to be at home with our family!”

“Why would he want to be?” Skyler had retorted, “After all, you’re the one who set me up as a ‘bitch’. Why would he want to spend Christmas with his bitch mom when he can go to Louis’ with the nice, normal mom?”

Walt rolled his eyes.

“A martyr complex doesn’t suit you, Skyler.”

“Look who’s talking, Walt,” Skyler hissed, picking up the baby and holding her against her chest. “Maybe you should just spend today somewhere else. I’m sure you have to work.” She spat the last word, and Walt had thrown up his arms, yelled something half-indistinguishable, and then gotten into the Aztek. 

He had turned on the radio and there was plenty of Christmas music spewing out, seemingly delighted to remind Walt that his family was in shambles. Walt wanted to smash in the console, but thought better of it. He just wanted to bury himself in work in the lab. He’d just put his eyes straight ahead and focus on getting the batch done. Christmas would not exist within the walls of the lab. After all, it couldn’t be something that Jesse was all that into. The kid didn’t even talk to his family, and his most recent girlfriend was dead.

Walt tried not to think about that part too much. He didn’t like where that thought process always ended up.

He parked in front of the laundry and opened the door. The workers didn’t say anything to him; at least he didn’t have to pretend to be in a good mood for them. They were probably paid relatively well to keep quiet, to not wonder if he was in a good mood or not. To not ask questions.

Walt could remember the days when he didn’t ask questions.

***

He opened the door and found himself on the landing that led to the spiral staircase. 

“Yo, Mr. White.” Walt turned in the direction of Jesse’s voice, and his eyes was hit with a flash of red light. 

“Jesse?” Walt asked, and his voice was equal points annoyed and confused. His eyes scanned the familiar lab for evidence of the unfamiliar lights, and finally they hit upon their source – a few strands of lights that had been hung from the staircase and around the walls of the lab. Not far from one of the settling tanks, there even stood a small artificial tree, bedecked in tinsel and various ornaments. “Jesse,” Walt repeated, not even sure what to say about this. He wasn’t sure that there were actually words to describe the situation.

”You, Mr. White, before you start talking shit or like, saying there’s contaminants in this or something, it’s all, like… sterile. We’re totally copasetic, ya know?”

“Jesse…” Walt took a few steps down the stairs, spending a long moment staring at the angel that Jesse had popped on the top of the Christmas tree. Jesse had drawn on a pair of glasses that looked just like the ones Walt always wore. 

“Okay, so you don’t like it. Well, you know what? Tough shit. It’s Christmas. It’s like, the law to like Christmas. Unless you’re Jewish or something.”  
Walt stared at him.

“I’m not Jewish,” he offered, wondering if that was what Jesse was asking. He had come pretty close to being Jewish, admittedly. Back in the days when he and Gretchen had been a couple, he had sent away for literature on converting. He had thought they were going to be together forever. That was back before she’d started looking at Elliot with stars in her eyes and he knew, knew that he couldn’t compete. He’d been too afraid to hate them, too afraid to make the scene he would make with relish these days, and instead he had chosen to simply walk away.

Jesse shrugged.

“Well, yeah, I figured you weren’t.” 

Walt didn’t exactly have anything to say to that, so he continued to look around the lab. He noticed a few boxes under the tree that had been wrapped up in bright red paper.

“What are those?”

Jesse’s eyes lit up, and he nodded excitedly.

“Gifts! I got you some stuff. I thought, you know…”

“You decided to turn our drug manufacturing business into a Pollyanna?” Walt asked, but he was surprised at his own lack of malice. Maybe it was because it was Christmas Eve. Maybe even, wrapped up in bitterness as he was, he couldn’t shoot Jesse down on Christmas Eve.

Walt was, again, confused at how to feel about this, and it showed plainly on his face. This side of Jesse was something he came across rarely. There was a deep compassion in him, even when Walt never outwardly showed it in turn. 

He felt a stab of remorse for not getting anything for Jesse. Then again, he still had the next day. Maybe he could get something for him. But what? What did Jesse even want? The kid had money out of his ears, but he still wasn’t happy. He seemed to want something that money couldn’t buy.

Walt found himself thinking of that refrain from The Grinch Who Stole Christmas: “Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store… maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more…” and he sighed.

“Jesse,” he said with a grimace, “All right. Let’s open these gifts.” He tried to think of something that would make Jesse feel better. Something that he was looking for. 

Jesse smiled widely and looked at Walt.

“Okay!” he exclaimed, and scooped down to pick up the gifts. “I hope you like them.” Walt’s own son had never given him gifts with this much anticipation, maybe because the outcome didn’t matter. When Junior had bothered to get his father a gift – now that he was a teen, that was less and less often – he’d gotten him stuff like tear-away calendars with Ziggy cartoons on them which, well, were nice, but Walt tended to even forget that he had them and they weren’t exactly from the heart.

Jesse’s hands were clearly shaking as he handed him the wrapped boxes. Walt thought he might even drop them, and put out his hands to grab them before they could hit the dark red floor. The color that matched the wrapping paper, almost, but not quite. The paper almost had a satin look to it. 

Walt realized that he’d been staring at the paper for far too long, waxing poetic about it in his head instead of pulling the ribbon and actually opening it.

He took a deep breath and started to fiddle with the ribbon, then chose to instead tear apart the surprisingly neatly wrapped paper, undoing the small pieces of Scotch tape. There was a technique to this that Walt had previously only seen with Jesse in the lab.

The first gift was a biography of Isaac Newtown. It was a hard-cover, and looked like it was some kind of first edition. Either Jesse had looked hard for this, or he had lucked out on eBay. Walt didn’t really care which. He nodded, pleased, then began to open the second gift.

It was a solid-gold Erlenymeyer flask keychain. Walt had not previously known such a thing existed.

“I, uh, got it custom-ordered,” Jesse responded quickly, “But if you don’t like it, ah, we can so totally go get you something else. I just thought, uh, it’d be neat.”

“It’s great, Jesse.” Walt looked at Jesse and gave him a nod, so that he would know he was sincere. However, he thought sadly, Jesse would have to know anyway because how often had Walt ever bothered to compliment him or thank him for anything? Even just for sticking by him in general? Walt put a hand on Jesse’s shoulder and squeezed it, repeating, “It’s great. Jesse… thank you. It… means a lot that you got me a gift. Two gifts, even. I’m sorry that I…” He was about to admit that he hadn’t gotten Jesse anything, but couldn’t bring himself to do so. “I’ll bring you a gift tomorrow, if you’re going to be at home. Will you be at home?”

“Yeah, I’ll be at home,” Jesse replied, “It’s not like I’ve got any plans. Just sticking at home watching the Discovery Channel. I mean, now a lot of movies come out on Christmas, but who wants to be the loser sitting in the back row of a movie theater going to see, like, Die Hard on Christmas? Like… seriously.” Jesse’s fingers were darting around, and he seemed to want to change the subject. “Oh, wait, hey man, check this out,” he said eagerly, turning on a dime and heading towards the coffee machine that had been Gale’s brainchild before Walt had fired him. “Remember that nerdy guy I replaced?”

“Gale,” Walt replied dryly. He still felt bad about canning Gale. He had liked the guy, and intellectually they had had a lot more in common than he and Jesse did. With Gale, it was like talking to an equal instead of a teacher talking to a student or a father coaching his son. Sometimes he did wonder, however, if he liked it better this way, like he didn’t have to worry about walking in one day and finding that Jesse had surpassed him too. With Gale that had been a real possibility.

“Yeah, Gale,” Jesse said. He grabbed a coffee cup and switched on the coffeemaker. Walt rolled his eyes. 

“Jesse, Gale showed this to me when I first started here…”

Jesse lifted the cup and presented it to Walt. 

“Drink,” he instructed. When had Jesse gotten so bossy? But Walt drank, determined still to turn over a new leaf in regards to how he was treating the younger man. Maybe that would be his New Year’s Resolution, not that he’d ever been particularly good at those.

Walt’s taste buds sang as he sipped what was not coffee, it became apparent, but eggnog. With just a tad of alcohol in there somewhere; Jesse could still be predictable sometimes.

“Why don’t we take the day off?” Walt suggested, shutting off the machine as he began to grow concerned for the possibility of some alcohol-infused fire beginning in the lab. He hung on to his own cup, however. 

“But we’re supposed to cook.”

“We’re up to beginning a new batch,” Walt reminded him, “Nothing to go bad. We’ll just double up production when we come in on the 26th. And even Gus has to understand Christmas.”

“I don’t know about that,” Jesse mumbled, but he started to take his gear off and place it in his locker, “Can’t really see him and Victor putting candy in each other’s shoes.”

***

Walt put his keys in the door and turned the lock, opening the door and stepping aside to let Jesse in. He looked down to see that a pile of mail had arrived. Mainly bills- the rent was due, but that was a non-issue. There was also an envelope full of explicit ads, which he tossed in the trash before Jesse could see them and make a comment about it.

The last piece of mail in the pile was a card. Walt stared at it a moment, noticing that there was no return address and that it looked as if it had been forwarded a few times before it had made its way to the condo address. 

“You got a card,” Jesse observed, and Walt ignored him as he ripped it open to reveal what was inside. 

On the front of the card was a man drawing on a chemical structure on a chalkboard, and when Walt opened it the pre-printed message was, “Hope your Christmas isn’t Boron!”

Inside was written, “Wishing you the best – I miss you. Life is ‘boron’ now that we’re not working together. Merry Christmas – G.B.”  
Walt sighed. Gale’s card was treading the line between just being pathetic and being vaguely passive-aggressive, but he didn’t have time to think about it now. He opened a drawer and shoved the card inside.

“Who’s that from?” Jesse asked, as eager as a Chihuahua. 

“Old friend,” Walt said quickly. “Here, sit down. Give me ten seconds. I have your gift in my room.”

Jesse took a seat on a chair and looked up at Walt suspiciously, before the older man darted off.

When he arrived at his room, Walt began to open and close drawers, looking frantically for something he could pretend was for Jesse. At this point, if a stray cat had wandered into the driveway, he probably would have picked it up and presented it to Jesse as something he had picked out just for him.

Alas, fate didn’t seem to be sending him one. 

There was the Walt Whitman book Gale had inscribed for him sitting on his nightstand – besides the fact that Jesse didn’t seem to be into poetry, it was obviously already a gift from someone else.

There were a few other books, but nothing that Jesse would be interested in.

Finally, he arrived at the box of things he had taken from his office at Wynne when he had been fired. He began to sift through it – a bunch of papers he hadn’t finished grading, an old half-drunk bottle of Pepsi, and a snowglobe were at the bottom.

A snowglobe?

That had potential. If he could even remember where the hell he’d gotten the thing from. He picked it up and held it against the light. It was of the Sandia Mountains, one of the places you could actually find snow in New Mexico. 

It would have to do. He stuck it in the pocket of his jacket and walked back to where Jesse was.

“I… Jesse, this is for you.” He held out his hands and offered the snow globe, figuring that Jesse would see through the hastily picked gift a mile away.

“Thanks, Mr. White,” Jesse said. He took it from him gingerly and placed it on the nightstand. “Guess I can have snow this Christmas after all, huh?” He picked it up and shook it, then smiled. There was a long pause, and Jesse worked his way through the room for a long moment. “Shouldn’t you be spending Christmas Eve with your family?”

Walt just shook his head a moment. He didn’t want to talk about it. He figured he would have to head back at some point tomorrow, or else Junior would ask question and end up bawling out Skyler about it, but right now he didn’t have the fight in him for another scene, another forced attempt at Happy Families which seemed as if it was destined to fail.

“Shouldn’t you?” Walt asked in return, and Jesse shrugged.

“I haven’t spent Christmas with my parents since I was sixteen,” he said quietly. He looked down at the snowglobe again. “Thanks. This is the first thing I’ve gotten in… well, since my aunt. She always used to get me something.”

“I think I left my eggnog on the dashboard of my car, but how about a drink?” Walt asked. “We can… It’s something.” 

“Sure, Mr. White.” Jesse rubbed his hands together, looked at Walt, and smiled. 

Walt walked into the kitchen and waited until he was almost of earshot.

He flipped over a glass that was sitting upside down in the plastic dish drainer. 

Then he whispered, “It’s family. That’s what it is.” 

He grabbed a second glass and walked back in.

“Merry Christmas, Jesse.”


End file.
